An experimental WebAssembly backend is definitively an interesting idea,
but as you have realised, to get PyPy running in the browser, it's not
necessarily needed, as you can compile C to WebAssembly instead.
Sure, a native backend sounds nicer, but from my PoV the real performance
questions lie elsewhere - so you've got an interpreter running under V8,
what next? Obviously, it's not performing very well. What are the
possibilities?
Are you going to try to restructure the interpreter in a way, that your
language sematics become clearer to V8 so to say and it will be able to
more or less JIT your interpreter directly? Is it even possible, with
custom backend by avoiding Emscripten or otherwise?
Or maybe it makes sense to first write a WebAssembly JIT backend keeping
the rest of the messy RPython -> C -> Emscripten -> WebAssembly toolchain
in place, and study how to JITs (PyPy generated JIT and V8 JIT) interact?
Is this interaction meaningful or harmful? Can it be turned into
productive cooperation?
These are open questions, I don't know the answers, but what I want to say
is that just being able to port interpreters to the browser is already
possible via Emscripten, and in the context of PyPy there are other
(I think) much more interesting questions to study.
... and I wouldn't muddy the waters with Python 3 transition, working on
the questions above there is enough material for several PhDs, not even
speaking of a master thesis :-)
On Tue, 12 Nov 2019, yun bao wrote:
I took a look at PyPyJS. I also spoke with some folks at Mozilla, and have
become very interested in WebAssembly. I think having
WebAssembly as a target for RPython would be very useful. Based on what I've
learned recently, it should be possible to write an
interpreter in RPython, translate it to C, then use Emscripten to compile that
to WebAssembly. However, if there was a WebAssembly backend
for RPython, it would be possible to build interpreters than run directly in
the browser (potentially even PyPy.). That seems like an
avenue worth investigating, doesn't it? I think while doing that, it would be
worth getting RPython compatible with Python 3. By the way,
these are things I'm thinking about doing myself, not recommendations to any of
you. I'm still working on a solid thesis idea for my
Master's.
On Sat, Nov 9, 2019 at 12:25 AM Yury V. Zaytsev <y...@shurup.com> wrote:
Maybe you should start by having a look at PyPyJS and then exploring
WebAssembly:
https://github.com/pypyjs/pypyjs
Sent from my iPad
On 9. Nov 2019, at 03:40, yun bao <dayun...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
I'm planning to go to grad school for a Master's. I'm thinking about
researching something related to getting Python running
in a web browser. All of the current implementations that allow you to do that
either transpile Python to JavaScript ahead of
time, or do some kind of on-the-fly conversion from Python to JavaScript. I'd
like to write an actual Python engine that will
run in the browser. As I've been mulling over this idea, I read about Pypy.
Given my limited knowledge of this domain
(programming language engines that run in the browser) and the exact nature of
the problem, Pypy seems like the best route to
achieving this. I'm still very much in the early stages of fleshing this idea
out, and besides the typical undergraduate
Programming Language class, I haven't done much in the way of programming
language design or anything compiler related. So I
have A LOT to learn. But I was hoping some of you who are Pypy experts could
give me a bit of advice on the feasibility of
what I'm considering.
Thank you,
Andrew
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Sincerely yours,
Yury V. Zaytsev
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